Fifteen minutes was, at the outside, the longest time they ever wasted on a meal.
That evening, however, they were singularly short of temper, for Cassidy had driven them mercilessly all day, and, though not usually fastidious, the supper was not to their liking.

The hash was burnt; the venison, for one of them had shot a deer, had been hung too long; while the dessert, a great pie of desiccated fruits, had been baked to a flinty hardness.

That was the last straw; for in the Mountain Province the lumber and railroad gangs as a rule work hard and live well; and when the cans of green tea had been emptied the growls culminated in a call for the cook.
He came forward and stood before them, a little, shaky, gray-haired wreck of a man, with the signs of indulgence plain upon him.

Whisky is scarce in that country, but it is obtainable, and Grenfell generally procured a good deal of it.

The man was evidently in a state of apprehension, and he shrank back a little when a big, grim-faced chopper ladled out a great plateful of the burnt stew from a vessel on the stove.
"Now," he said, "you've been spoiling supper too often lately, and I guess we've got to teach you plain, cookery.